When the New York Times (a daily always eager to head the media pack) suddenly praises Al Gore as a visionary environmentalist and superstore chains like Walmart and Tesco don the mantle of â€˜friends of the earthâ€™ one can safely conclude the snow has melted clearing the way to a â€˜Springtime for the Greenies.â€™

The thaw-out began some time ago but turned into a flood after global scientists last month tabled a doomsday report on climatic changes and former U.S. vice-president and presidential candidate Al Gore shared a Hollywood Oscar for a documentary on global warming.

Overnight converts blossomed on every political patch. Chronic and calcified skeptics like President George Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard stumbled towards the new bandwagon. Cabinet ministers down to village mayors extolled their virtues as environmentalists and announced their own â€˜significantâ€™ efforts to save the earth. Fierce critics of global warming executed one hundred and eighty degree turns while industry, once the sworn nemesis of any change that could imperil their profit margins, fell over one another to add â€˜ecologically friendlyâ€™ tags to their advertising blurbs.

New York Timesâ€™ columnist Maureen Dowd, notorious for mocking Al Gore during the 2,000 election campaign as â€˜The Ozone Man obsessed about global warming and the information highwayâ€� this month did one of those opportunistic â€˜turn and face the other wayâ€™ switches when she wrote the world would be in better shape if Gore sat in the Oval Office instead of the current occupant. (Gore lost to George W. Bush in a much disputed razor-edge election)

Needless to point out much of the new interest in Mother Earth has been prompted by opportunism and hypocrisy, the former to cash in, the latter to save face. Even presidents, premiers and prime ministers suddenly and ardently wished to save water - to save energy, to stop pollution, to reduce fossil fuel emissions after having dismissed or ridiculed the peril of global warming and climatic change for decades as â€˜unproven scientific speculationâ€™ or the more blunt â€˜hogwash.â€™

Industry, most vulnerable (thanks to a revolution in communications) to global campaigns charging it with environmental and human rights violations was quicker then governments to confront, neutralize and even take the lead in the battle to save the planet.

Environmentalist guru George Monbiot argues in his investigation â€˜The New Friends of the Earthâ€™ that after being classified as the arch enemies of the environment during the 1980 and 90s â€œembarrassingly, for those of us who have scorned the idea of corporate social responsibility, some of these companies now claim to be setting higher standards than any government would dare to impose on them. Marks and Spencer, for example, has promised to become carbon neutral and to cease sending waste to landfill by 2012 and to stop stocking any fish, wood or paper which has not been sustainably sourced. Tesco promises to attach a carbon label to all its goods, Walmart now says it will run its US stores entirely on renewable energy.â€�

Big corporations have reshaped the world at will to make bigger profits for themselves. Today most of them are noisily trumpeting their innovation of environmental-friendly measures. The switch to â€˜greeniesâ€™ will, of course, allow them to continue making large or even larger profits.

Most people would say there is nothing wrong with this, except, as Monbiot points out: â€˜It reflects the failure of democracy and the success of the market.â€™

He wrote: â€œHeld back by forces both real and imagined, politicians have failed to confront the environmental crisis, just as they have failed to tackle inequality, or to challenge the power of the White House, the media barons, the corporations and the banks. The choice between two rival brands of margarine appears to have become more meaningful then the choice between Labor and Conservatives.â€�

The media, dexterous in its flexibility, is also changing tack. Take as example New York Times columnist Dowd and her change of heart about Al Gore.

(Gore was a dove on war, on terrorism and on Iraq.)

In her past columns Dowd sneered at Gore as a member of â€˜the wackadoo wing of the Democratic Partyâ€™ and derided him as â€œthe champion of Kyodo and author of a chicken-little polemic warning of an ecological Kristallnacht and wastelandâ€¦.â€�

Before the 2,000 election she told her readers: â€œI have zero desire to see President Gore round the clock putting comely interns to sleep with charts and lectures on gaseous reduction.â€�

In 1999 Dowd wrote: â€œAl Gore is so feminized and diversified and ecologically correct he is practically lactating.â€�

And she made more fun of Gore in recent years after he had told his â€˜fellow Americansâ€™ during a TV interview that President Bush â€œhas created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation.â€�

Of course Gore has now been vindicated, both for his assessment of the Bush Effect and his battle against global warming. Hollywood honored him with an Oscar and Ms Dowd, like so many politicians and heads of state, is back-pedaling as fast as she can pedal while pretending she was never wrong.